Satellite Technology Management Says It’s Cooperating in FBI Probe

Satellite Technology Management Inc. is cooperating with an ongoing federal investigation into the company’s exports to a “limited number of countries,” a company vice president said Wednesday.

Early Tuesday morning, agents from the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement and the FBI executed a search warrant at the company’s Costa Mesa headquarters. Agents spent several hours in the building before removing a number of documents for review, company Vice President Steve Strohman said.

A published report Wednesday quoted an FBI spokesman as saying federal agents suspect that STM diverted controlled technology to Iran. FBI and Commerce spokesmen, however, would not comment on the case Wednesday.

STM executives “really don’t know what the allegations are, nor do we know where they began,” Strohman said. Federal investigators have not filed any charges, he said, and STM “is cooperating fully with the investigation.”

Agents told STM officials that the search was “part of the discovery process. . . . They’re merely collecting information to review to see if there’s any reason to go forward,” Strohman said. “If they have additional questions we will cooperate with them. . . . We have done nothing wrong that we know of.”

STM, which made its initial public stock offering in March, 1992, is a commercial telecommunications company that does business in the United States and about 18 other nations. Satellite communications networks manufactured by the company, which has about 90 employees, are used mainly by commercial businesses. STM reported a profit of $948,800 and revenue of $4.4 million for the first quarter.

The company’s stock lost $1.625 a share to close at $7.375 in NASDAQ trading Wednesday.